CHAPTER IV
THE MARRIAGE
It is difficult, nay impossible, now to fix the exact date of the secret, but definite, understanding between the Duke of York and Anne Hyde.
Macpherson places it in 1657. James, he says, “had fallen in love with Anne when the Chancellor and he were on ill terms,”[[95]] but the probabilities point to the Paris visit already described. This would give a reason for the Prince’s lingering on in the French capital at that time, for he appears then to have been treated by the Court of France with very little consideration, a state of things which he was by no means the person to endure meekly, proud and punctilious as he could show himself to be.[[96]]
[95]. Macpherson’s “Original Papers: Life of James II., by himself.”
[96]. Thurloe Papers.
It was, by the way, then—if at all—that his sister Mary made the secret marriage with the younger Harry Jermyn, formerly a suitor of Nan herself, though the fact of such a union is more than doubtful.[[97]]
[97]. “Life of Henrietta Maria.” J. A. Taylor.
However, James himself acknowledges that it was when the Princess and her train came to Paris that he was first attracted to the young maid of honour. He says that she brought “his passion to such an height as between the time he first saw her and the winter before the King’s restoration he resolved to marry none but her, and promised to do it, and though at first when the Duke asked the King his brother for his leave, he refused and diswaded him from it, yet at last he opposed it no more, and the Duke married her privately, owned it some time after, and was ever after a true friend to the Chancellor for several years.”[[98]]
[98]. Macpherson’s “Original Papers: Life of James II., by himself.”